Does your streamer not have wi-fi? I wonder whether a wireless transport would be a better option and output a wired digital signal from that to the streamer?
The underlying Wi-Fi technology the products use is important. These are now referred to by numerical value, Wi-Fi 4 = 802.11n, Wi-Fi 5 = 802.11ac, Wi-Fi 6 = 802.11ax and Wi-Fi 7 = 802.11be
Wi-Fi 6 was designed to address a lot of the limitations and interoperability issues associated with previous generations in particular as consumers moved to Wi-Fi 5 and began to utilise the far less congested 5 GHz band.
If you’re looking at this as a complete solution to service not just your Naim kit but the whole property, I’d be looking at a current generation Wi-Fi 6 Access Point, disabling any existing Wi-Fi radios, likely to be older generation, and create a new extensible Mesh based network using satellites from the same product range and manufacturer. Ideally look for products that are Wi-Fi Alliance EasyMesh certified and this will give a level of assurance that they’ve been thoroughly tested for interoperability and extensibility.
Brands to consider include Netgear, Ubiquiti, Cisco, ZyZel or Plume
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Nope. It’s an Innuos Zenith 3. There are lots of reasons to not change. The sound is superb (although obviously tainted by noise at present) and the app is superb. No room for extra boxes like a transport. I’m heading in the opposite direction. Eventually the 4 boxes of Naim amplification are replaced by an integrated solid state class A or valves.
As per previous posts. My wi-fi “solution” is fine. Dual band router. No black spots or weak points. Simply need a decent, relatively inconspicuous wireless bridge which will take an ethernet cable and can then be located where there is a socket and well away from black boxes etc.
Hi Mike, yes understood you just want to add to what you have, I was highlighting the limitations of the different generations of Wi-Fi technology. Assuming your existing Wi-Fi Access Point and router are using a Wi-Fi 5 radio then adding a bridge will almost certainly work but will come with constraints, interoperability between radios being a common issue, there’s also the possibility that adding it will impact performance of other client devices on that network. Wi-Fi 6 based products are worth considering regardless as they will ensure a degree of future proofing down the line even if initially you aren’t taking full advantage of the inherent benefits of Wi-Fi 6 over Wi-Fi 5.
If your existing Wi-FI router is a TP-Link product you might consider something like the TP-Link RE505X for example.
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Elsewhere this has been suggested as the obvious immediate solution.
Rhinocables Ethernet RJ45 Extension Cable CAT5e/CAT6 Network Internet Extender — Male to Female Patch Cord Connector — 5m / 500cm, CAT5e (Grey) from Amazon.
I think they’re right. Thoughts? Struggled to see an equivalent on designacable so have persuaded Mrs. H. to press buy the cat 5e on her account.
Allows me to move the existing bridge to the other side of the room and run ethernet across. Obvious really. Cable unlikely to be inferior to the thing hardwired into the bridge. Once it’s working immediate noise levels should drop through lack of proximity to black boxes. Should also be a gain through the DAC then having its own dedicated wall socket.
Switch aside, the next obvious step would be an LPS for the router. Thoughts welcome or ought that to be a separate thread.
Hi Mike, you may have read some of this stuff in other posts I’ve made elsewhere but in this context its hopefully worth repeating.
3 years ago I started with a clean slate to create a local and remote streaming system. In terms of networking I started with 2 priorities:
- As good sound quality as possible
- Solid, uninterrupted, high performance network access for all network devices in my house.
My network is based on a mix of ethernet cabling and wi-fi and can be defined as follows:
- Devices that only support 2.4GHz wi-fi
- Fixed devices that are a long way away from the wi-fi router
- Mobile devices
- Video streaming
- Audio Streaming
Within a few miles of my home I had 3 major electronics retailers so I was able to buy and return a number of devices to trial and compare. These included 2 brands of mesh networking, extenders, power over mains devices, various routers plus some high quality ethernet cabling that came from Synergistic Research.
At the end of this I finished up with the following installation, which provided the optimum sound quality, optimum video streaming and most robust wi-fi without buffering interrupts or dropouts.
My broadband of ca 630Mbps is provided by Virgin Media via co-ax cable to a Hub 3, which is a combination cable modem and 2 band router. I run this in Modem-only mode and take an ethernet cable from its WAN socket to a TP-Link Archer AC 5400 Tri-Band Router. Referring to the above devices list this is set up as follows:
Band 1 2.4GHz. 1 & 2 & 3
Band 2 5GHz. 4
Band 5. 5GHz. 5
The above arrangement gives me solid domestic wi-fi without any heavy streaming loads to drag down bandwidth, a dedicated HD video streaming band and a dedicated HD audio streaming band.
My hi-fi server was initially an Innuos Zenith MkII SE, now upgraded to a Statement. In the hi-fi room I installed a TPLink RE650 AC2600, chosen mainly for its sound quality. The RE650 is set up as a wi-fi to ethernet bridge, with the 2.4GHz band, polling and LEDs all switched off and clients limited to the Innuos Statement. I can manage both the Archer 5400 router and RE650 bridge from my iPhone or iPad using the TP-Link Tether app. I run a short ethernet cable from the RE650 bridge to the Innuos. Due to the high speed wi-fi transmissions, the innuOS 2,0.X ‘push’ operating system, and the single client wi-fi there is almost no network traffic during active music replay, which means very little ‘noise’ or CPU interrupts.
I started out by adding an AQVox SE switch between the RE650 bridge and the server and now run a cascade of AQVoxSE into Melco S100/PF Ultra OCXO into Innuos PhoenixNET into the Statement. The installation has been highly optimized with anti-vibration platforms, highly screened star-wired ethernet cables and Sean Jacobs DC4 power supplies throughout.
One day, when I get FTTP I will certainly give fibre optic a try but in the meanwhile the musical performance of the above system is exemplary.
The pictures show the now modified RE650 with anti-vibration wall mount, 5V DC LPS feed and Synergistic Research Atmosphere X Ref ethernet cable.
Curious mounting!
What vibrates that made you mount it that way?
This unit will work for Mike’s setup. I’m intrigued by your wall mount setup, is it physical vibration of the unit that you are solving?
Well I’ve already started to take my next quick step so apologies if we cross posted but that’s an impressive read and I will take it on board once I’ve read it a few times and broken it down. Thank you.
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The original RE650 unit includes a built-in 5V SMPS and gets its 230V by plugging directly into the wall.
In its OEM configuration it sounds excellent, besting 2 different mesh units and even sounding superior to a high quality ethernet cable, which I found surprising.
As I stated in my original post, I followed a strategy of ensuring that each subsequent network component had, as much as possible, a superior specification to the preceding units. For the RE650 this meant that vibration control and power supply needed to be upgraded.
So where does the vibration come from? 3 sources:
- On-board power supply transformer.
- On board AC to DC rectification
- The wall
So 1 & 2 are looked after by replacing the on-board PS with a hybrid DC3/4 5V LPS……while 3 is taken care of by suspending the unit with 4 nitrile o-rings under minimal tension, thereby isolating the unit from the wall while maintaining the intended antennae orientation.
All this may seem ludicrous for a £100 network module but if you think about it, all that bridge is doing is modulating the 5V DC from the PS, using the digital part of the signal from the radio receiver as its template. The more accurately that modulation is performed, the better the quality of the data stream arriving at the next network module, so the better its output and so on
So how have you ascertained the specific difference it made doing all that?
That aside, and putting aside that I now have my small next step, what’s the difference between that device and say a TL-WA850RE?
I’d say if you want networking equipment that’s designed to perform to more exacting environmental tolerances then you’re best looking at enterprise or industrial versions of these products. They’re usually built from the start to a much higher specification and with more robust and expensive components. Doing all the tinkering to a product designed for a domestic setting to a constrained price point is a bit like putting a nice set of alloys on a Nissan Micra, it’ll look a little better and probably be a bit nicer to drive but it’s only ever going to give you marginal gains.
The kit I get from work (Ruckus) is designed to work in very demanding environments like hospitals, sports stadiums, oil rigs and so forth. Some products cost as much as a HiCap DR but they perform to a level far in excess of anything you can buy in Argos.
I’d suggest if anyone is serious about optimising a home LAN to look at these much higher quality starting points, Cisco, Ruckus even Ubiquiti will give you a far better foundation to build out from and be a more meaningful financial investment than linear power supplies or other tweaks.
It’s worth mentioning of course that none of this kit is built specifically with audio in mind, the effects and in some cases benefits are also mostly subjective, improvements in the underlying Wi-Fi standards do benefit consumers across multiple use cases including audio streaming in particular far better spectrum management and wider channels as well as new spectrum in the 6 GHz band.
Even the most recent Naim hardware supports at best an 802.11ac connection on either the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands however even with clients based on older generations of Wi-Fi like 802.11ac or 802.11n, an infrastructure based on 802.11ax (WI-Fi 6) still gives overall gains and improvements that all clients benefit from like robust MU-MIMO and basic service set colouring to better handle channel concurrency and interference as examples.
I’ll stop now, it’s getting late 
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Yeah, I totally accept that. My intent with this move is to remove very obvious noise from proximity. There will still be noise and longer term I think PhoenixNET is likely my solution there.
Hi Mike,
Firstly what’s the difference between the RE650 and the TL-WA850RE?
Here’s a list of the differences that I noticed
- 5GHz band
- Far faster transmission (300Mbps vs. 1733Mbps)
- Greater range and sensitivity (2 internal vs 4 external antennae)
- Gigabit ethernet port
- 8.2.11 ac standard
- 4x4 MU-MIMO
- Access control
The RE650 was chosen mainly for the way it sounded, after it was compared to a variety of other products and networking methods. I’ve looked at the professional networking stuff but for the most part improvements relate to robustness for working in challenging environments and not to the areas most critical for audio like power supplies, oscillator stability and precision, isolation transformer quality, removal of LEDs, resonance/vibration control etc.
So on to the development of my networking which was done empirically. I started with a simple ISP modem/router connected via wi-fi to the RE650, which was in turn connected via an AQVox SE switch and ethernet cable to the Innuos Zenith MkIISE. The system sounded wonderful, with nothing I didn’t like other than a small hump in the bass I attributed to a room node. Being an audiophile I’d read that the USB output could be improved with a USB reclocker/regenerator so I ordered one along with a dedicated power supply. The unit arrived but even after 400 hours of running-in it was a clear downgrade in terms of overall system sound quality. The unit was outperformed by a simple Chord ‘C’ cable and massively outperformed by a Synergistic Research Atmosphere X Ref USB cable. Investigation into why revealed that plugging its SMPS into my dedicated mains immediately reduced the systems’s magic, regardless of whether the reclocker was in circuit or not.
This revelation immediately placed a question mark over the AQVoxSE’s wall wart power supply, so I ordered a Sean Jacobs DC2. The installation was a real eye opener as the sound quality took such a significant leap forward, with increases in everything valued by a music lover and audiophile….so much so that I immediately returned the DC2 and replaced it with a DC3 with Mundorf capacitor upgrade. This again brought another major performance uplift and it became clear that the network stream quality had a major influence on the music. I then decided to look into the modem/router and tried a number of different alternatives before settling on the TPLink Archer AC5400. Being tri-band I could assign an entire band to audio, which brought another uplift in clarity and pureness. The router looked a little odd just sitting on the carpet and I had a spare Atacama base, so I set that up under the router. It looked much better, but surprisingly also brought a small SQ improvement. Both modem and router were powered by small, cheap SMPS ‘bricks’ so I ordered a dual rail DC3 to see if that made any difference and I was again shocked at the performance increase that gave, so much so that I decided to modify the RE650 by removing its inbuilt PS and adding anti-vibration measures.
The SQ I was now achieving was better than anything I remembered from shows and dealer demos and the initial small bass emphasis I thought was a room node had completely disappeared, so I continued to focus on the network feed. At this point I discovered Mundorf Silver/Gold JSSG360 DC cables and these things made a major difference, especially in terms of purity and holographic imaging, so I added two for the AQVoxSE and RE650 and two more for the router and modem. They take ages to run in but the improvements they bring are not subtle.
By now I had 4 DC3s in the system when Sean Jacobs released his cost-no-object DC4, so the opportunity arose to upgrade all the power supplies with DC4 regulators, Statement-class transformers, DC4 EMI casework-screening, Isoacoustics Orea footers and Mundorf Silver/Gold cabling throughout.
I had been reading some rave reviews about cascaded switches, so my next step was to add a Melco S100/PF Ultra OCXO and an Innuos PhoenixNET with dual rail DC4 and full Mundorf silver/gold wiring. The system was now performing to a point that it was uncomfortable listening to it with the lights on due to the huge disparity between the spaces the eyes see and those that the ears hear. Start a track and the entire acoustic space is immediately transformed into whatever is on the recording be it intimate, large or infinite. 3 dimensional musicians fill the space, which is completely immersive. I have one track where you can hear a brass band playing in the distance and it genuinely feels like its coming from a fair that may still be a mile away. Speed and PR&T are incredible and listener involvement is IMO SOTA generated via the feelings and emotions inherent in the music. At least in my system, fully sorting the network feed has brought astoundingly good results. I have 3 more upgrades planned….SR Galileo SX USB between server and amp and Ethernet between PhoenixNET and Innuos Statement, DC4 ARC6 capacitor module upgrades to all PSs and perhaps SR Blue, Orange and Purple fuses starting with the modem PS and gradually improving as you move through the system.
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Can’t ask for a better response than that. Excellent read too. Thank you.
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Interesting discussion. I, too have the Vonets VAP11G-300 wifi bridge. It’s connected to my HDX and powered by the HDX USB port. It is used for setup and control of the HDX only (not for transmitting music - I use the HDX analog connections to my NAC252/NAP250). I compared this to an ethernet connection before settling on this configuration and could hear no difference. The VAP-11g-300 doesn’t appear to be injecting any noise into the system on its own. Don’t know how it would work to transmit a wifi music signal to a receiver-equipped amp/speakers.
Just a quick update. Took a little time out this morning to power down the DAC; unplug DAC and Vonets bridge. Moved the latter to the other side of living room albeit still sharing a socket periodically. Ran 5m of ethernet from left to right across the front of the fireplace and plugged the DAC into its own socket for the first time.
Speakers continue to hiss nicely when you’re close up (impedance mismatch) but the extraneous and obvious warbling noise from within the bridge (caused I think by their perpetual flashing lights) has, as hoped/expected, gone.
Hard to judge what’s causing what at present but my system rarely sounds this good during the day. I suspect there’s as much impact from the DAC having a 5 minute power down and then discovering it finally has its own socket.
So, thanks to all. Will see how this develops over the next few days but, having loved this lots over the past year I only love it more right now.
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